unconditional respect

So, I should really be asleep, but I thought I'd just have a quick chat about stuff.

I realise I've been quite silent recently, and I think that's because I've been holding things in. Feelings, you know, kind of adolescent ones. No, I don't mean having steamy daydreams about Limahl (yes, I know, really embarrassing that one - especially as, in adulthood, when I look back at him with that hair in that yellow cat suit thing on Top of the Pops, he is so obviously gay). I mean getting unreasonably irritated by my parents.

There are lots of things that older people do that don't really bother me, but somehow do when it's my own flesh and blood.

I'm thinking inability to use wing mirrors whilst driving, or understand that black people are also allowed to live in Devon, for example.

However, after bumping into a couple of friends of mine from Kathmandu (they live in Baisepati and I live in Lalitpur, but we met up in Croyd - there's a thing) , I tried to change my ways. E is English and is married to V, from Taiwan. E said that after years of living in Asia, and being married to an Asian woman, he has learned the trick of unconditional respect, and now nothing his mother does annoys him. I was quite impressed and decided to try this at home.

I did my best, honest I did, but then Grandparent took two of my children out the other day, whilst I took Twin 2 to the doctor's (the wee fiasco, now happily forgotten). I asked if he could take his mobile with him in case I needed to get in touch. He said firstly that he only ever switched it on to make an outgoing call and secondly that the problem was it was too big to fit into his pocket (I think he bought it in 1989), so the answer was no. That would annoy you, wouldn't it? Yes, it would.

Anyway, I rose above that one but then today there was the whole not-letting-the-kids-have-pudding -until-they-have-eaten-what's-on-their-plate thing. Which I abhor. My kids have the rest of their lives in which to discover the delights of broad beans, and I hardly think they are going to get scurvy or berri berri by not having them now. The whole food blackmail thing is bad enough anyway, but at least let the pudding be real pudding. I mean, something with chocolate or sugar in it as a minimum, if you are going to go down the whole arms-on-hips-cats-bum-mouth palaver. So today the kids were told they couldn't have any pudding until they had finished their first course. What was pudding? A small bunch of sour grapes from the garden.

Pul-ease.

I had to go upstairs for a very long time to try to regain my unconditional respect mode.

I think one day my Dad will go out into the wilderness (he does this at every opportunity anyway, owning, as he does, acres of unused farmland and woodland), just like Moses, and come back having happened upon some smouldering shrubbery (a burning bush would be a bit too dramatic and vulgar for this part of the country) and been given a couple of carved tablets with the ten commandments (customised for slightly left leaning middle class couples of a certain age).

These will be:

1. Thou shalt not switch on one's mobile phone (and the mobile itself must not have been bought within the last ten years).

2. Thou shalt not vote Tory.

3. Thou shalt not allow one's grandchildren pudding without a clear plate from first course.

4. Thou shalt not smile when grandchildren make up songs about wee or poo.

5. Though shalt not be completely comfortable when someone of an ethnic persuasion gets planning permission in the village,

6. ...but thou shalt not show it, instead make up other reasons for objecting to the planning application.

7. Thou shalt not use wing mirrors, ever, for they are the devil's tool.

8. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's new four-wheel drive, but thou shalt buy a new one anyway because the lanes can get shockingly slippy, you know.

9. Thou shalt not hear a bad word said about that nice Joanna Lumley (do you remember her as Purdey?)

10. Thou shalt not bother with the last commandment, because it's something to do with popular culture, probably one of those ghastly reality show things or to do with pop and roll and young people or somesuch, and therefore not worth a passing thought.

These are, in fact, all the rules you need, if you are a person of a certain age, living in Devon at the moment.

And I say that in an unconditionally respectful way.